Music composer and virtuoso bandeonist Ástor Piazzolla wrote the operetta María de Buenos Aires to a libretto by the Uruguayan poet Horacio Ferrer as early as 1968. Since then, it has been presented worldwide as a stage work and also as a concert performance with dance entries. The production in seventeen pictures is actually an allegory of the Argentine tango and the city of Buenos Aires, where this captivating and passionate dance was born. The dance of the poor from the suburbs and ports, brothels and spitting bastards. The story tells the fate of a girl named Maria from a poor suburb of Buenos Aires, who was born "with a curse on her tongue on a day when God was drunk." She loves to tango, but the unrestrained life sweeps her away. She becomes a prostitute and goes through all the filth of a South American suburb until she dies violently, after which she goes to hell to be reborn. An allegory of the city that gave birth to it, destroyed it and resurrected it.
Lenka Vagnerová has created a show that not only mixes different genres. The production moves between drama, opera and contemporary dance and offers a cocktail of dynamic direction, Wagner's typical choreographic style, full of energy and expression, Spanish and Czech poetic, even surreal text, singing and live music. Actors and dancers deftly cross the boundaries of their genres to create believable characters with performances that naturally transition from acting to dance, physical theater and singing. And we must not forget the great performance of the main representative of Maria - Kateřina Marie Fialová. She, as if she was born for this role.
Lenka Vagnerová's dance production evokes conflicting reactions with its expressive rawness, but you will definitely not leave "empty" after watching the performance.
